


Ten Times I Loved You

by altmodes



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Drinking, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, Mild Gore, Mnemosurgery, Other, Public Display of Affection, Romance, Romantic Gestures, Sticky Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 03:32:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8128822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altmodes/pseuds/altmodes
Summary: There's about as many ways to say "I love you" as there are stars, but that won't stop Rewind from trying to say them all.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is a lot of happy sweet love fic with a touch of sadness.
> 
> only mentions of gore and mnemosurgery; some sex and sexual attraction as an undercurrent throughou.
> 
> writing this made me gay and dead. i'm okay i died though

1.

Chromedome curls his long limbs in around Rewind, rustling his plating to get comfortable; he’s half-asleep already. Inside the folds of his arms, against the warm droning hum of his chest, Rewind has never felt more safe.

“You’re--” Chromedome has to work to keep the right parts of his vocal synthesizers online, but he doesn’t work hard. His words are muddied with sleep. “You’re so warm.” A hand folds over Rewind’s back, nearly the whole of it. “Small.”

Rewind huffs an incredulous noise, buzzing kisses against the barely-visible copper of Chromedome’s faceplate.

“Hey, Domey?”

He tilts his head up when there’s only silence-- Chromedome’s visor has gone out in the darkness, his engine rumbling smooth and deep against Rewind’s chest.

“I love you.”

 

2.

“Ha-HA!” Rewind throws down the datapad onto the bed with a croon of delight. Chromedome just growls out a sulky sound, stretching out and dropping his own datapad loosely. Yeah, totally no big deal. Just got his steering kicked out by his conjunx in a rhythm game _again_.

“Aw, sorry, didn’t do as well as you hoped?” Rewind would stick his tongue out if he had one, but that might be overselling it anyway. What even are oral facial expressions.

“It _doesn’t_ matter.”

“Oh, good,” Rewind slides up to him, with a bubbling sweet tone, “then it won’t bother you that I got a full combo, right?”

“ _Please--_ ” Chromedome is half-laughing and half about to try to crawl off the bed. Rewind just wraps an arm over one of his tires, resting his cheek on it coyly. It’s honestly too easy.

“I didn’t hear you miss a couple beats at the end, did I?”

“Stoooop--”

“I looooooooove youuuu--”

 

3.

Chromedome stretches out on the floor, and for a moment, Rewind is barely listening to him, mentally zooming in on the way those enormous shoulders handle the tension as Chromedome reaches his arms out above his head, puts some arch into his back. It’s regrettable: the discussion is riveting in its own right. At least he can play it back later.

“You probably know this better than me, the debates about the causes of memory fatigue, whether it was natural or stress-related, if certain alt modes had different fatigue patterns.”

Rewind folds one of his legs in and pats his lap. Chromedome makes a soft noise as he twists his body over and lets his head settle onto Rewind.

“Mhm,” Rewind says, encouragingly. “And then all the thinkpieces about cold-construction and memory processing that started to come out.”

“Yeah, exactly. My point is that the definition of memory fatigue, even the symptoms, were still being redefined by political convenience. If someone thought that cold-constructed mechs might have more mild chronological blurring than forged ones, then that was the hallmark of memory fatigue. If it was memory suggestibility that they did worse in, supposedly, and forged mechs were worse in chrono-blur, then suggestibility was _obviously_ the way to define long-term memory issues. It’s pseudo-science to suit agenda.”

Rewind cups Chromedome’s cheeks with his hands: his face is so much larger, his visor huge and glowing like a pool. Rewind can see his own visor glimmering in the reflection, his face upside down.

“Ooh, I love you when you talk politics, Domey.”

 

4.

Rewind’s vocalizer is only buzzing in synchronized tone-steps now, glitchy moans harmonizing together in satisfaction. The urgency in his hips relaxes into an easy rhythm of grinds and squeezes onto Chromedome’s spike. When the climax fades to something more like a foggy night than a hurricane, his vision refocuses: in the low-light gleam, Rewind can see Chromedome’s optical band recalibrating as they focus on him, trace his movements. His hands are wrapped around the span of Rewind’s hips, thumbs rubbing circles into his thighs.

Rewind eases forward and off of Chromedome’s spike with a contented buzz, a wet and empty sensation inside him, and settles against the convex shape of his chest, the hum of his engine like an old song against his cheek. He could almost fall asleep there, just draped across Chromedome’s chest without any tension left in his cables and pistons. He almost does.

Chromedome lifts a hand, and lets it whisper along the back of Rewind’s neck, over his back. “I love you,” he says, softly. Rewind almost doesn’t hear him, but he does.

He tilts his head to peek sidelong at Chromedome, and push-pulls himself up to straddle his chest; Rewind puts a hand on his cheek, and leans down to beam at him, feeling the glow and heat settle off Chromedome’s metal into his face from inches away. He presses his mask against Chromedome’s, letting a hum purr from his throat into his faceplates and through both of them. A deeper rumble echoes back, warm in the engine below him and running up through his body and softer against his face. Rewind rolls his cheek over Chromedome’s, and buries it under his jaw.

“Love you, too.”

 

5\. 

Chromedome wakes like he always does on late night cycles like these-- bad nights, the worst kind of nights that Rewind can think of: screaming. Curled asleep against his chest, Rewind can feel the full power of that fear, roaring and seizing in Chromedome’s engine, shearing through the bands of his voice. It shakes through Rewind’s whole body, a reminder of exactly how small he is. It’s terrifying on every level he can imagine. There’s a cold feeling in the pit of him, like a fuel line’s been cut.

“Chromedome.” Rewind fights back the wavering in his voice, and plants a hand on his conjunx’s chest, another on his cheek. He’s trembling, like fever. “Chromedome. Chromedome. You’re okay. It’s another dream.”

It seems so dark in the room, just their visors-- Chromedome’s flashes, panic-- but Rewind feels a gust of burning air vent over him. His HUD reads the temperature of their hab suite ticking upward by degrees.

“Rewind,” Chromedome gasps, and catches one of his arms with a hand. His voice is all but dissolving into static; pink gleams wet at the corners of his optical array.

“Yeah,” Rewind finds his sureness in his voice, suddenly, wrapping his hand around Chromedome’s, pulling it against his chest. He lets his fingers run over it, up and down, up and down, easy. “I’m here. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

“I-- it was--” Chromedome lifts a hand, pressing it hard against his visor, then burying his face into his forearm. Rewind steels himself, resting his head against Chromedome’s wrist. “Cantilever. He-- a spying mission, his whole… his whole face, it was just--” His head stays buried in the crook of his elbow, and Rewind has a sick feeling that maybe Chromedome thinks it’ll all fall apart if he lets go. He remembers Cantilever, and the pictures of him in pieces afterward. “They wanted to know what he saw. Before. Before.”

Rewind hums, enough to fill the silence, the raw sound of Chromedome’s crackling voice. He squeezes his hands around Chromedome’s, leans against him. He can still feel the stuttering and grinding inside him. “You’re right here with me, and you’re all in one piece. Okay, Domey?”

Chromedome drags his head up, and exhausts another vent of air from his shoulder pipes, cooler this time. Just a fraction of the tension in his body is gone, enough that he can sag towards Rewind, back down onto the bed.

“I shouldn’t have.” Chromedome’s voice is still so quiet, and his body is so loud. Rewind has to work to pick it out. “I shouldn’t have.”

Rewind lets his fingers brush against the edge of his conjunx’s face, and when he doesn’t flinch, he lets his hand rest there.

“Shhh. That’s not who you are now.”

Rewind’s thumb rolls over Chromedome’s cheek. The metal is burning hot, and wet.

“I know you. I love you. It’s gonna be okay.”

 

6.

“ _No_.” Chromedome’s voice is shockingly firm, given the way it spills a little at the edges, warm and silky with engex. “You’ve had plenty.”

“I’ve had _one_.” Rewind huffs.

“Like I said.”

“You’ve had,” Rewind counts out his dramatic pause internally like a metronome, “like _four_.”

“Yeah? When you’re six or seven meters taller you can have a couple more.”

“ _Domey_ , c’mon,” Rewind attempts a reasonable tone, wrapping his arm over Chromedome’s and leaning his face into him. He gets closer to something out of a sitcom instead, all camp and playfulness, interrupting himself with a giggle. Chromedome snorts. “You think I’m gonna get outta hand or somethin’?” Rewind slides his palm over the smooth panels of Chromedome’s inner thigh; if he pretends he’s not halfway spilling off his barstool and onto his conjunx’s, then it’s just not happening, as far as he’s concerned.

“Yeah.” The answer comes deeper and less composed, Rewind is pleased to note. Chromedome washes down his surprise with another gulp of engex from his straw. “Something like that.”

Rewind doesn’t pull his hand back. His fingertips dig into the cabling inside the seams between plates, walking the fingers of his other hand up Chromedome’s shoulder. “How ‘bout a kiss then?”

Chromedome swirls the straw around like he’s thinking about it, humming out a mock-indecisive _hmmm_. Rewind tip-toes his fingertips up to the plate extensions framing that pretty face, and maybe it’s lucky that Chromedome is slouched so low, or he’d be wobbling a little more to reach. But his impatience gets the better of him-- Rewind’s fingers latch around Chromedome’s cheekplate to pull his face closer, to face each other. He’s close enough to see Chromedome’s visor lit with surprise-- with thrill. 

When he tries to lean closer, though, Rewind just slips off the stool and flat onto Chromedome. He’d be on the ground, except Chromedome’s reflexes are better than his, even with all those extra drinks. Instead, Chromedome sweeps him up onto his leg, with Rewind’s back to the bar counter.

Rewind can’t stifle the bubbling flow of his laughter.

“ _Wow_.” Chromedome’s not guiltless, either, _or_ sober; his voice is effusive, and his hand slips down the curve of Rewind’s backstrut. “You have had enough.”

“Yeah, yeah. My hero.” He leans forward, and presses their chests together as he leans up to rub his faceplate against Chromedome’s. Rewind feels like he’s sparkling. Maybe he is; he sure is humming. He settles back an inch or two, but not until after he’s good and ready, and bats Chromedome’s cheek with his knuckles. There’s a flush of heat in the metal under him, maybe one-third engex and two-thirds attraction, if Rewind has any say in the math.

“Hey, you,” Rewind says. Chromedome’s optics are so bright this close. So bright and gold and beautiful. “I love you.”

 

7.

“Aaand -- live in forty-five kliks!”

“That’s precise.” Chromedome stretches. He pretends he’s gotten over his shyness around the live feed, but Rewind can tell the difference: Chromedome just tries to act _cool_ and _blasé_ about it instead, all shrugs and short remarks. It’s cute. Rewind’s told him a million times to act natural, just be himself, be _authentic_ , but nobody ever listens. Almost nobody’s authentic when you’ve got a rolling camera hooked up to a screen somewhere in their face.

“That’s the news,” Rewind teases, tilting his head up to look at his conjunx and tapping the camera.

“If you call running historical commentary on a fashion show ‘news’--”

“Hey! People love ‘subversive’ and ‘superficial’. A quarter of Cybertron is watching, based on the stream stats I’m getting. Prolly more when it gets started. Which iiiis-- wait-- now!”

Rewind swivels around to face the lit-up area behind them, ignoring Chromedome’s attempt to hide his cringe.

“Hi, I’d like to welcome our viewers and listeners to tonight’s production of _Style in Time_.” He’s got his best _announcer_ voice on now, and he knows he almost sounds like a different person: sometimes the filmmaker should be invisible in his works, and sometimes he’s the personality that brings the film to life.

“This is Rewind of Lower Petrohex,” he turns, slowly but dramatically, and he sees Chromedome’s visor flash warily, “with my partner and wonderful conjunx endura, Chromedome, helping to commentate the frames, paint jobs, and details we’ll be seeing tonight.” No response. He’s lucky Chromedome didn’t faint, although he guess he could be dead on his feet. Rewind waves, just in view of camera. Chromedome’s wave back looks a little disoriented, he thinks, smugly. “Hi sweetspark. Love you. Isn’t he beautiful, everybody.”

 

8.

The movie night is going well, from the occasional running updates Rewind gives over their private comm channel, little imitations of dialogue from the crowd and sparkling observations. His witty conjunx, Chromedome thinks, and sprawls out on their bunk. He’s supposed to be having a movie night of his own, but instead he’s just been staring at it. Just listening to Rewind and thinking. It’s been nice.

Chromedome flips the diskette between his fingers delicately-- old school in a way that warms something inside him, one of the ones Rewind burns from his memory banks-- before he plugs it into the projector they have in their hab suite. There’s no warning, nothing on the label except a glyph in Rewind’s careful handwriting: ‘Watch Me’. It could be anything. If he were betting, his shanix would be on some explicit thing he’d almost forgotten about from a thousand sweeps ago.

The film flickers into life. For a second, Chromedome thinks maybe it is porn, a close-up zoom of his face, visor swimming in the view from Rewind’s headcam. The light in his optical array glimmers in the clip, and then the film version of himself bursts into laughter.

The clip ends with a cut to another scene at a bar, spliced together so fast he barely registers what Rewind’s voice is saying in the loud crackling audio-- a joke, Chromedome thinks. The version of himself he’s watching with his elbows settled on the countertop, hand just lifting his glass of engex and straw to his mouth port again, lets out a laugh so hard and sudden he can hear himself choke over the film audio. Primus, Chromedome remembers that now. The joke about where the next Prime could put the Matrix if they really wanted to turn the planet around. He had really thought he was going to die for a klik there.

Another cut, another scene-- no context, just his own face pressed against Rewind’s, so close to the camera that it’s almost impossible to make out the shape of it, like some kind of art project distortion with a wide angle lens. They’re both laughing-- Rewind’s is like a melody, but it sounds so different over the recording, like it always does. The proximity to the mic makes his voice, his laugh, almost a stranger.

The next clip is Chromedome lying on the floor of their hab suite at Kimia, gasping ( _for half a beat he thinks it was one of his episodes before he catches the laugh underneath the sound, pitchy and full of static_ ). Rewind must be on the bed, he thinks, maybe on his stomach and leaning off to watch him howling. On the film, he looks like he’s about to cry, the corners of his visor shimmering a little. Chromedome isn’t sure what night that was at such a quick glance, or what was so damn funny, before it cuts out again.

Brainstorm comes in midway through a sentence, talking like a bullet-barrage and fireworks about workarounds to the Ethics Review Boards’ ethical reviews. Rewind must be by the door to Brainstorm’s lab in this one judging by the angle, watching Chromedome watching his best friend all those millennia ago. Chromedome is laughing at him, but doesn’t interrupt; Brainstorm doesn’t seem to notice at all.

Hard cut.

Chromedome’s head is between Rewind’s knee’s, and he’s laughing so hard, he _is_ crying.

Hard cut.

Rewind is thrashing, so the camera is shaking, and it’s dizzying, almost impossible to see. Chromedome wonders if he meant to include this, except he knows Rewind too well-- he knows what he’s doing, every microklik of footage he uses. All he hears is the warbling shrieks of Rewind’s laughter at first, before Chromedome starts to see the flashes of yellow and orange in the camera, the snatches of incomprehensible teasing in his voice through the sound of his own laughter. It’s gone before he can piece it together.

Hard cut.

Chromedome’s face pressed against Rewind’s chest, only the top of his head visible to the camera. The sound is barely there at all, just the noise of both of their internal mechanisms, the unrecognizable thrum in the background, a faint chuckle from Chromedome; Rewind must have edited the volume on the recording manually.

Hard cut.

Hard cut.

Hard cut.

Chromedome pulls a knee to his chest, his cheek slumped against his arm as he watches the memories roll by, carefully assembled and curated. The room is almost dark, too quiet even with the noises of the ship around him, when the reel ends. He wonders if there’s a hole in one of his tanks, just leaking out into the inside of him; he feels a little dizzy.

Silently, Chromedome hits play again.

 

9.

Rewind’s voice is almost absorbed among the datastacks and whirring electronic noise. Even with the emptiness around them, he feels the words hang in the air, suspended like a drop on a web, waiting to fall.

For a moment, he thinks, _I didn’t just say that. I can’t believe I said that,_ but it’s not true, and he can, and he knows it as soon as the words spit out of his processor. Of course they’re true. They’re true like it’s true that Rewind’s been avoiding the touch of Chromedome’s hands, or holding his gaze too long, or leaning up against him to doze off after a long night like this one like he used to-- all symptoms of this huge, unavoidable _fact_ that Rewind _really fucking loves him_.

Rewind doesn’t move. He just looks over his shoulder, waiting for some kind of response. Anything from Chromedome, not just him standing there, staring back at him.

But he just _keeps_ staring.

“Hey!” Rewind pivots and snaps his fingers. Whatever quiet had fallen over him as well-- doubts or fears-- they’re gone now. He wants a response. “You listening?”

“What?” Chromedome asks, finally. His voice sounds hazy.

 _Oh,_ Rewind thinks, _fucking Primus._

“I said _I love you_.”

 

10.

 

 

 

 

 

“Yep. Yep. Bye-bye. Yep. Love you too.”


End file.
